Dogs & Diets
Henry was losing weight. His little ribs and his backbone were feeling worryingly close to the surface. He was eating as voraciously as ever, practically inhaling half a can of Chum in about eight seconds (a motion, incidentally, which made his ribs stick out even more - as if he was trying to generate more suction). I kept upping his quantities, eventually feeding him twice a day, worried that his system wouldn’t cope with the sheer volume of congealed meat-like matter. The result was lots of putrid flatulence, but very little increased padding. He was wormed and wormed again (although it makes one shudder to imagine the tapeworm that would be capable of keeping up with his intake).
So we went to the vet. He weighed a kilogram less than he did when we bought him home from the RSPCA, when he was less than a year old. The vet didn’t seem too concerned - she took a blood test just in case, but the main thrust of her dignosis was that I’d been feeding him crap with no nutrients in it. Whereas in the past his food had been supplemented by lots of leftovers and table scraps, since I’ve been living on my own he has had to subsist solely on the contents of his dog bowl. Chum, it seems, like other tinned dog foods that you buy from the supermarket, doesn’t have much actual food in it. The vet described it as tinned water. That surprised me a bit - I’m not used to the idea that cheap, low-quality food would make you lose weight. Where human food is concerned, the less you pay for it, the more fattening it tends to be. The same, apparently, doesn’t apply to dog food.
So the Chum had to go, to be replaced by Science Diet, a dried food that you buy in bags the size of a corpse from the pet shop. Well, do you think that solved the problem? Less than a week into the change, I had an obesity crisis on my hands. I had to buy a measuring scoop to reduce the portions to the incredibly miserly-looking recommended dose. So the skinniness issue was resolved.
More surprising, though, are the other effects. Henry’s coat has never been softer or shinier, and I don’t think he’s farted in a week. And he’s started behaving like a puppy again. He’s been careering around the house playing with toys. He’s covered the kitchen in a coarse layer of pillow-stuffing, the result of a continuing altercation with his bedding. In the park, he runs down his tennis ball almost before it hits the ground, even the one shot in ten that finds the sweet spot on my tennis raquet.
I always assumed that dogs would be well enough adapted to a diet that consisted of whatever they could scavenge, and that their bodies would be able to deal successfully with whatever came along (snail pellets notwithstanding).
Actually, I’ve tended to think the same about people. I tend to think we should eat sensibly and not overdo it on cholestorol or calories, but I don’t believe that paying six bucks for a thimble-full of wheatgrass juice is going to turn you from a walking zombie into a bright-eyed pixie. A good diet is one that allows you to avoid adverse health effects (obesity, heart disease, diabetes etc) while allowing you to enjoy a good life. Your particular brand of breakfast cereal or salad dressing or vitamin supplement probably doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference to anything, other than a placebo effect if you can convince yourself that it’s useful.
Henry’s experience, though, maker me wonder. Admittedly, I’m not, as he was, living on a diet of food marketed for its “chumpiness” combined with occasional snacks of other animals’ faeces. But it would be fair to say that my diet, like his old one, comes mostly out of tins, and has nto been structured very thoughtfully to take account of nutritional needs. Might be that the odd fruit or vegetable could find a useful place in my calorie count. I’m in the habit of throwing down some conciliatory baby spinach with breakfast, as a kind of peace offering to my digestive health, but my vegetable crisper is tundra-like. Fortuitously, the 55 tram runs right past the Victoria Market, so perhaps it’s just a matter of figuring out when the dollar-a-bag specials start.
The I in Team
Chatting with various people today about the Socceroos’ World Cup loss to Italy last night, I seemed to be in the minority in thinking that the result was fair enough. I know that it was a horrible way to lose in the end, but even if the awarding of the penalty was a mistake, it wasn’t a glaringly obvious one like a few of the other refereeing errors that Australia has had to endure. More to the point, though, throughout the game it seemed to me only a matter of time before Italy took the lead. Yes, Australia did a good job under the circumstances, but the Italians were clearly better throughout the game, despite trailing in the possession statistics. If possession was measured in heartbeats, the Italians would have been far ahead. Whereas Australia spent a lot of time doiking the ball around the midfield, searching for a gap in the Italian defence with all the persistence of Burke and Wills looking for an inland sea, the Italians spent all their possession time streaking down the pitch with relaxed and controlled grace, managing to run at full stretch while keeping the ball less than three inches from a swinging boot at all times, threading balls through the Australian defenders and making them materialise at the feet of strikers. The Italians were kept from the Australian goal only by desperate defensive lunges. The Australians were kept from the Italian goal by a triple-teaming swarm of nonchalant Azzuri who matter-of-factly rejected every forward thrust, about as panicked as Roger Federer contemplating a defensive lob from an outside qualifier.
In fact, the best chance for Australia might have been to attack less. Perhaps by camping steadfastly enough in the midfield, not bothering to rebound the ball off the Italians defenses, they might have been able to hang on for a penalty shootout. As it was, every cross toward the Italian goal was treated by the Italians as the kick-off for another of their brief but heart-stopping attacks.
The credit due to the Socceroos is due to their teamwork, their discipline and cohesiveness. Unfortunately, the Italians had that too, and they also had the brilliant individuals that Australia lacked. We needed some fancy stuff, someone to conjure some attacking magic inspired enough to bamboozle the Italian defenders. Our workmanlike appropach never really looked like cutting it.
Fixing that problem is going to be hard without becoming a nation like Italy or Brazil, where the average kid emerges from the amniotic sac with a soccer ball already balanced on his cranium. With good organisation, good coaching and good commitment from the individuals involved, we’ve managed to push further than anyone had the right to expect, but to compete with teams like Italy we would need to be immersed in the sport in the same way that the Italians are. Success or failure at this level, it seems, relies as much on individual brilliance as it does on team cohesion. The team might function as a single organism, but without one bloke with the virtuosity necessary to put the ball in the back of the net, it will all be for naught - a well-structured accompaniment with no soloist. Whether Australia will do better in future World Cups will depend on the extent to which this World Cup captures the imagination of schoolkids. If enough soccer balls bounce enough times on enough heads in enough schoolyards, then perhaps Australia will be able to recruit the Ronaldinho that it lacks. Surely this World Cup will represent a turning point for the sport in this country, but it remains to be seen what sort of trajectory it will end up on. We certainly have a long way to go before it could qualify as a national obsession and give us the required harvest of footballing freaks.
LCD
The simplest and least financially risky way to reach a mass audience was to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Hence commercial television’s notorious aversion to innovation even though innovation is the lifeblood of any creative industry.
I was just wondering, reading this: why the lowest common denominator? Isn’t it snobby to use that phrase in this context? Doesn’t it assume that, by definition, that which appeals most consistently to the largest body of audience will be bad or trashy or unworthy in some way? The quality of material on TV varies from the crappiest of the crappy to the greatest of the great, and there’s no rule that says the crummier of two programmes will always get the greater audience.
I don’t doubt that TV producers are risk-averse, but so what? Maybe they can’t afford the flops that would inevitably result from an edgier strategy. Commercial TV, like Hollywood cinema, is a high-stakes game - there’s a hell of a lot to lose if things go wrong. Does that stifle innovation and creativity? Absolutely. But who said TV was supposed to be particularly creative or innovative? Maybe it’s just wrong to expect massive businesses to take those sorts of risks. Maybe they’re just structurally unsuitable. Not least of all, they’ve got conservative shareholders who expect responsibility and restraint.
In Australia, this conservative approach seems to have resulted in a decline in local productions, a boost to the number of imported shows, and an increase in reality television. I don’t personally watch many of the cops-lawyers-and-hospitals imports, but I don’t think that they could be rightly characterised as trash. They’re generally well made, well written and well acted, even if their formulas tend to be repeated. Reality TV is cheap to make and compelling to watch - I don’t think you need to sneer at the great unwashed who watch it in order to explain why it keeps getting made.
The trouble with referring to the lowest common denominator is that, by doing so, one claims to be a higher multiple (perhaps even a prime?). It presumes the TV audience, the ones making up the ratings, to be dumber than us. I guess it’s possible that they are - maybe those who write columns criticising TV are a part of an intellectual elite who do actually enjoy superiority in judging what constitutes good entertainment. Doesn’t seem very likely, though. It’s my habit, when I’m tempted by that kind of conceit, too look for another good explanation, because there usually is one. In the case of film, we know that the most interesting, innovative stuff tends to come from small, indepdendent, low-budget productions. I don’t think that’s a paradox - they spend less, they’ve got less to lose, so they can afford to take the sort of risks that they do. The risk is necessary in order to produce a small quota of really great material, and it will necessarily produce a lot of flops as well. The more money is involved, the less risk the investors are going to be prepared to put up with. If you go to the casino and watch some roulette, you’ll see fewer chips scattered around the high-payout individual numbers on the field (roughtly a 1 in 36 chance of winning), and more on the low-payout (about 1 in 2) reds or blacks.
If you want innovative music, don’t buy a ticket to a Rod Laver Arena stadium spectacular. If you’re looking for a literary experience that will change your life, don’t buy an airport novel. And if you want to watch new, exciting, exhilarating televisual programming, don’t blame all those Low Commoners and their bloody Denominator when you don’t find it on commercial TV.
Sugary Surprise
A Krispy Kreme Doughnuts store has opened in Fountaingate Shopping Centre. I know this, because Nova FM has been doing live crosses all day, talking to people waiting in the two-and-a-half-hour queue. I’m struggling to understand this. Melburnians have access to an incredible variety and abundance of sweet sticky buns. I’ve tasted Krispy Kreme donuts. They’re just stock standard, mass-produced donuts. You could go into Brunetti’s in Carlton and choose blindfolded from their sweet counter which is the length of a supermarket freezer, and you’d be guaranteed to find yourself eating something that would be better in every way than a KKD. You could repeat this process once a day for a year without eating the same thing twice, and without being disappointed. Two-and-a-half hours is ample time to leave Fountaingate, drive to Brunetti’s, buy your stuff and get back again .
If it’s particularly donuts that you’re looking for, I’ve got two recommendations. Firstly, the plum jam bomboloni at Sugardough bakery on Lygon Street in Brunswick are heartbreakingly good. They are to KKD what Paravotti is to Richard Marx. If that’s not quite unhealthy enough, though, then I’d suggest that you get yourself out to La Trobe University in Bundoora on a Thursday during semester time. Among the Thursday market stalls that set up in the shelter of the East Lecture Theatres, there’s a donut van which sells freshly made hot jam donuts. They roll out of the fryer, jam is injected using a special jam-injecting machine (which has a sort of syringe needle which is inserted horizontally into the donut, with a vertical plunger which somehow manages to force the jam through the needle), then they’re rolled in sugar and sold on the spot, three to a bag for two dollars. They are crisp on the outside, and light and fluffy on the inside, except for the jam, of course, which is hot and runny and delicious. A queue of students forms before the hutch opens up, and the line stays more or less constant until the last donut is sold.
So with so much donutty goodness available (bearing in mind that my two choices probably only scratch the surface), how to explain these punters lining up for two hours to buy these franchised numbers? I’ve got two ideas. One is that, until this opening, the only KKD store was at Sydney Airport. People knew that it was the only one, the only place where these donuts could be bought. So people travelling through the airport were inclined to pick up a box for their workmates, and all involved could feel special knowing that they were feasting one something exclusive.
Of course, there’s only one Con’s Takeaway, too, and that’s not enough to make his egg and bacon burgers into a national icon. KKD’s, though, have celebrity status on their side. They’ve featured in a Seinfeld episode, along with various product placements in various other American sitcoms. Of course, the Seinfeld appearance then begs the question - why would anyone in New York City, of all places, bother with Krispy Kreme Doughnuts? It’s got me stumped.
Anglos, Skips and Wangers
Driving home tonight, the comedy duo on the radio were discussing the peculiarly generous endowment of Jamie from Big Brother. It seems to have become quite the barbecue stopper (and yes, I’m mindful of sausage jokes as I write that). I’m not all that interested in Jamie’s length or girth (neither of which, truth be told, I’ve thought all that exceptional from what I’ve seen, but maybe that’s just because I don’t have a plasma). What I was interested in was the direction the discussion took, which was something along these lines:
ANNOUNCER 1: Well Jamie looks like a Skip, so it’s surprising that he’s so big - Australians aren’t normally that big.
ANNOUNCER 2: There’s been this study of men from around the world, and the Italians come in first,. Australia is about fifth.
Then they asked for female callers to ring in to report whether their own sampling has revealed any correlation between length of manhood and ethnic background. The first call went something like this:
ANNOUNCER 1: So, June from Caroline Springs, what nationality was the biggest man that you’ve had?
CALLER: He was Australian, actually.
ANNOUNCER 2: So did he have any Aboriginal blood or anything like that?
CALLER: No, just pure Australian.
I’m sure that she was talking about an Anglo-Australian. Both the reference to “Skips” by the announcer and the fact that the caller clearly equated Australianness with white Englishness made me think about this construct of “Aussie”. I’ve never been that keen on the word, but since Cronulla it seems to me that the word has taken on a different meaning. When I was growing up, I think it was just synonymous with Australian, meaning someone who lived here (or was a citizen or whatever). In Cronulla, though, where the text messages called rioters to reclaim the beach for the “Aussies”, the implications were clear. In schools, too, I’ve noticed “Aussie” being used among studetns to distinguish the Anglos from the rest. Even the ockerest of Asian-faced students seem to fall short of qualifying as “Aussies”.
I don’t think it’s obsessively politically correct to point out that Australians can be of any ethnicity, and that to use “Australian” to mean “Anglo-Australian” has shades of bigotry. Is there something offensive about the word “Anglo” that makes people reluctant to use it? Is it some republican thing, a reluctance to acknowledge Englishness? Or is it just the dominant (although only just) ethnic group claiming the right to “pure” Australianness by virtue of their dominance?
In schools, carrying an ethnic tag often seems to be a sort of social identifier. It’s not necessarily exclusive, and friendship groups are often multi-ethnic, but ethnic identity is a big topic of conversation, sometimes fights and insults, but also just good-natured banter. In many of these schools, Anglo students are in the minority, and I think that “Aussie” gets used to refer to the lack of readily identifiable national heritage. If you’re not obviously Italian or Greek or Lebanese or Chinese or Vietnamese or Sudanese or Islander, then you don’t have an ethnic badge like everyone else at school, so “Aussie” has to do. Used in that context, it seems a long way from Cronulla.
Still, I’m all for “Anglo”. It’s not that I regard myself as particularly English, it’s just that, in an immigrant society like ours, I think it’s helpful to acknowledge one’s immigrant history, even if that history is quite distant. Aborigines, of course, came as a part of a much earlier wave of immigration, but I’ve never heard an Aboriginal person place a claim on the word “Australian”. The rest of us are all boat people of one kind or another, and if we’re going to label subsets of Australians according to where they arrived from, then everyone should have one. To claim an exemption is to imply that we were always here, which is obviously wrong.
Miscellaneous Couch Thoughts
(Sometimes, the need to write a title on a blog post seems limiting, somehow. What if I don’t want to write on a single discreet discrete topic? What if I want to just crap on for a while? What if I don’t particularly want to telegraph anything about what I’m about to say before I actually say it? What if I don’t want to waste the time coming up with a pithy title for every bloody thing. Once or twice, I’m sure that I’ve been subconsciously put off writing anything because of the idea of having to come up with a title for it).
Further to the discussion about national anthems, most of the Germans (prior to this current game against Ecuador) were singing along, albeit not as lustily as one might expect given the unparalleled singability of their anthem, which comes courtesy of one Herr Bach. Interestingly, that tune was called Austria in the Salvation Army Hymn Book that we used to use in the brass band. I’m not sure that Back himself called it that, but still, there’s something a bit odd about it, what with, you know, Anschluss and everything.
In the SAHB, incidentally, and probably elsewhere, the tune starts with a two beat anacrusis which always seemed to me to cross the natural meter of the melody. The first beat of the bar, according to the book, came on the third note. (I’ve just created a couple of musical examples to upload here, but WordPress tells me that they don’t meet security guidelines … what do they have against Germans, anyway? It was a bit of an ordeal to create them using this Linux-powered laptop controlling Sibeilus my Windows-powered desktop over a VNC connection - all to avoid getting off the couch - so won’t bother just now doing any troubleshooting. Probably only of interest to music geeks anyway, as opposed to that last sentence, which was only of interest to a different kind of geek.)
On a marginally less geeky note, I made a grand tour of all the little computer shops in Brunswick today, looking for a particular adapter cable that I needed. The expedition was frustrating to begin with, owing to the fact that I actually own one of these little adapters - I bought it myself with my own money not that long ago - but it has since gone missing and has defied all my attempts to locate it. I must have put it in a safe place somewhere, along with a few other things that I know that I once owned but now might just as well not. So anyway, I bit the bullet and took my bike from box mover to box mover looking for a replacement. The annoying thing wasn’t so much that I was having trouble finding it - the cable is a bit old-fashioned and was probably never a big seller in the first place - but that I experienced so much open hostility from the computer shop owners for presuming to hunt for something so obscure. One of them went so far as to assert that there was no such thing as the cable I was looking for, as if it was just a pie-in-the-sky fantasy on my part. I didn’t bother telling her that I’d actually seen one with my own eyes not that long ago, and even taken it briefly into my possession. I doubt she would have been convinced. Elsewhere, the question “What do you want one of those for?” took on an accusatory tone which made me almost feel I should apologise for asking. Others tried to get me to buy an altogether different cable, as if I was just some odd guy who goes around buying cables for the hell of it not really caring what plugs and sockets they have on the end. In a trip that started at Fangs and finished at Man Lee with Infinity and three or four others in between, I had no joy whatsoever. In desperation, I went to a two-dollar shop on Moreland Road, a funny place not on any retail strip to speak of, sharing a building with a crystal-and-incense emporium. I’d been in this place once before, and happened on that occasion to notice a rotating rack (with each hook, oddly, marked with a boy’s name) carrying an assortment of computer and audio cables. There I found a package, with a $4.50 price tag, containing the very cable I was looking for. My satisfaction was only slightly disturbed by the fact that the owner tried to charge me $6 for it.
Big blowup on the bandstand tonight. I experienced that guilty schadenfreude (get me with the German tonight … they’re leading Ecuador 1-0 as I write) that often occurs when I observe a dispute not involving me. Just as one can sometimes feel warmer for the rain falling outside the window, so can one experience peace when one is proximate to - but isolated from - other people’s conflict. An unbecoming smugness, no doubt. (Germany 2-0).
I have to go out tomorrow and buy some clothes that would allow a 34-year-old bass player to fit into a band of 21-year-olds without looking like a 34-year-old trying to look like a 21-year-old. “Wear something nice” was the directive for the last gig. I scratched my head for a while and showed up wearing a fairly generic all-black. I was hopelessly overdressed - the only one in the band not wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The singer was wearing work boots with paint splashed all over them. The drummer was wearing a t-shirt that looked like someone had played dot-to-dot on its surface using a teat pipette filled with hydrochloric acid. Hopefully my clothes shopping will be a bit less frustrating than the gadget shopping today, but I’m not holding out much hope.
Last night I went to hear the Paul Williamson Hammond Combo playing their Monday night residency at the Rainbow Hotel in Fitzroy. The venue smelt the same as it did the last time I went there, three or four years ago, but it also retained the cosily euphoric vibe that I remember from when I used to visit as a tourist from Adelaide. It used to be a pilgrimage, a must-see every time I came for a live music fix. Since I’ve lived here, of course, I’ve been twice. I’ve been looking for a word or a concise phrase to describe this phenomenon, whereby an abundance of supply actually leads to less consumption. When I know that I can go to a place like this any Monday night I feel like it, it’s easy enough to put off going until next Monday, and then the Monday after that, etc. If I knew I could only go once a year, or even once every few months, then I’d probably make the effort, because the experience is, after all, very rewarding. Similarly, there are friends living down the street from me who I see only seldom, not in spite of the fact that they are so handy, but because they are so handy. Because I can see them any time, I hardly see them at all.
None of that makes any sense, of course, since it’s really pleasure that I’m talking about - the pleasure of seeing friends, or seeing a great band in a great place. It’s not as if either is a chore. It’s just convenience and abundance being used as a perverse excuse for dumb immobility. It turns out that pleasure requires a discipline of its own, because it comes in few forms (rambling blog entries notwithstanding) that can be indulged while recumbent on the couch.
Anthems
The national anthems at the start of each match in the World Cup provide a barometer of some sort. There’s a whole ritual where the players walk out, each holding the hands of a cute kid, then line up shoulder-to-shoulder while the anthems play. The camera zooms in on each player’s face in turn while the PA system and the fans present the music in loose heterophony. Usually, there are at least a few of the players mumbling along in the hedging manner of an atheist reciting the Lord’s Prayer at a wedding. Now and then, the whole team will be belting lustily. And sometimes, all players stand with the awkward look of a broken-voiced adolescent opting out of “Happy Birthday”.
I haven’t kept any scientific record of participation rates in the national anthems so far (not least because I’ve only watched about a third of the games), but some have stood out. Portugal this evening seemed to be in particularly full voice. Serbia and Montenegro last night seemed singularly reluctant to burst into song.
I would guess that there’s a strong correlation between the enthusiasm of a team for the anthem and the enthusiasm of their people as a whole for their particular nation state. A state like Portugal, old and proud and sharply defined against a distinctly different neighbour, will tend to produce footballers who don’t mind vocalising their approval. A state with artificially-ruled boundaries which divide some culturally homogenous groups between neighbouring states, and unite inter-group hostilities within the one state, will tend to produce footballers who find the anthem a bit of a yawn at best (and offensive at worst).
Perhaps this effect might be particularly pronounced in football, as distinct from other sports. The Indian and Pakistani cricket teams both seem to generate their share of patriotic fervour (among the fans if not the players). I can’t recall what their anthem performances are like, but the players certainly seem to identify unambiguously as being either Indian or Pakistani, despite the fact that both states are entirely artificial, and that there was no particular attempt to keep those sharing a cultural and religious identity together on one side of the border or the other. You might think that the Bengalis and Punjabis on the team, at least, could be forgiven a degree of “India Schmindia” (or Pakistani/Bangladeshi equivalents).
Football, of course, is not only global, but globalised. When compared with participants in other international sporting carnivals, those in the soccer World Cup must have by far the highest proportion of expats. English County Cricket contracts aside, most of the Indian cricket team at least notionally live in India. Harry Kewell seems to spend about as much time in Australia as Clive James (and less than Billy Connolly). Harry and Clive both still, as far as I know, identify as Australian, which is fair enough. I would imagine that, in each case, the idea of Australia is an important part of the idea of him. Whatever Australia is, I feel like a part of it, and to the extent that I’m defined by a nation, Australia is it. I’m happy enough to express that identity with the occasional rendition of Advance Australia Fair (which, for all its blandness, has some nice sentiments and a rare opportunity to use the word ‘girt’).
If I was Serbian, though, and the people that I thought of as my people had seen states come and go like a public servant watches the departmental letterheads change, then the national anthem might leave me with a bit of a softon. That would be even more the case if I didn’t actually live there and I had to phone home to find out what country I was a citizen of this week.
A great counter-example to this theory of mine is the performance of the Japanese team, citizens of perhaps the most culturally homogenous country on Earth, but apparently reluctant to showcase their national pride with a rousing unison chorus. Might be something there about national anthems themselves being an essentially European brand of nationalism, but I’ll leave that to another long-winded post.